


Sixes And Sevens

by Cahaya (Tarlaith)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sentinel/Guide, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8350327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlaith/pseuds/Cahaya
Summary: Billy makes him go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "Sixes And Sevens": _to be in a state of disorder and confusion._

Sam Chisholm called it a “favor”, but ever since that bloodstained, flame-colored night, Goodnight Robicheaux knew that it was nothing less than his life that Sam might want some day. And because he owed _everything_ to the man, he never truly minded.

Now they were on their way to Rose Creek, the place Sam had chosen as his Gethsemane, and something was wrong. The small town hadn't even come into view yet, and more disconcerting than the rich, bitter smell of _death_ in the air, was the choking feeling of loss. It lay on the plains like a burial shroud, so heavy and inescapable that even someone as emphatically challenged as Goodnight could feel it.

Or maybe it was just the emotional bleed-through from the bond, he thought, because Billy had slumped over in his saddle an hour ago, shoulders stiff, a rigid tension around his mouth, brows furrowed. He was breathing shallowly, through clenched teeth, as if the air was too hot for his throat. His knuckles were white on the reins.

It made Goodnight nervous, protective instincts flaring from emotions that weren't even his. He was about to reach out and do... _something, anything_ to soothe, when Billy suddenly turned, a warning in his eyes. The flimsy thread of connection between them cut off, and Goodnight was left alone in the cold yet much too familiar, aching emptiness of his mind.

With a sigh, he turned to Vasquez, who had been talking animatedly to Horne for the past mile and a half. If Billy wanted to handle this himself, he had every right to do so.

 

-

 

Antietam came flooding back as he stared at the retreating thugs, and stared, and heard Faraday's encouragement, and stared some more and couldn't do it. He couldn't.

He stood on a burning field, the smell of corn and wool and burnt flesh in his nose, his _mouth_ , smoke catching on the rim of his teeth, rasping on his tongue, dry from dehydration. The metal of the gun hot beneath his fingertips. Ears ringing from gunfire and yells and desperation.

Goodnight didn't dare breathe in, terrified of tasting more smoke, more blood, more vomit. He didn't remember how long he stood there. Until his vision turned black beneath the veil of the night, until the embers became stars, until someone collected him – stunned, caught in the eddy swirls of his senses, _lost_ in his own mind.

Zoned.

He did remember how long he stood _here_ , staring at Bogue's man, the tang of Faraday's disgust faint in the air. He stood and stared until Billy touched his hand and took the rifle from him, the brush of his fingers on Goodnight's a calming reassurance of the passing of time.

Billy offered some flimsy excuse for Goodnight's failure, blamed it on the gun. But it's innocent, the trigger had never been pulled. Later that evening, Billy's legs brushed his beneath the table, and the touch banished the nightmares back into the realm of sleep.

 

-

 

As they laid in their cot that night – sharing, as Sam and Faraday and Vasquez did, because the nights were as cold as the days hot; because out here, summer and winter were compressed in a single _day_ – Goodnight turned his head into Billy's shoulder and whispered, quietly and slowly, to not wake the others in the room. “Are you all right?”

It was an innocent question by all means, but Billy's fingers tightened on Goodnight's thigh, his nails digging in so sharply they would cut his skin were he naked.

“Yes.”

It sounded like an accusation, like a threat. Billy _dared_ Goodnight, warned him to shut up before he lost the careful grip on his controls.

Goodnight nodded and turned back, letting it slide, and later that night, in his sleep, Billy curled into his side, pain etched into his face, eyes wide awake behind his closed lids. He only calmed when Goodnight touched him back, ran a hand down his back and whispered how it would all be okay. It was sad and funny, how only his lies could make Billy smile. Even if he didn't know.

 

-

 

Billy was up early the next morning. The nightmares this town had suffered were too much to bear, even with the support of Morpheus' arms. The morning air cleared his head, enough to push back the headache, enough to push back the memory of Goodnight's soothing smell in his nose. The closeness of his Sentinel was still something Billy did not understand, did not need, the longing and the dependence, and, most of all, the want.

Theirs was an arrangement of convenience, and Goodnight was a wounded animal inside – shying away from contact, from responsibility, from _feeling_. Get too close and he would run. Goodnight needed him, but all his affection was born from instinct. From the love and devotion a Sentinel offered his Guide, not from the loyalty a man offered his lover. Billy drew up his shoulders, as he only allowed himself in quiet, lonely moments, and only when no one was watching.

On the street, the memories of Rose Creek were even harder to bear. They woke up with the people, flooding the streets with _grief_ and _loss_ and _anger_.

Without meaning to, Billy sought shelter in the destroyed church, and was surprised to find that he wasn't alone. Emma was waiting for him, kneeling. She was a Guide, too, bending but not breaking under the pressure.

She was radiating vindictiveness and hopelessness like a furnace did heat. She was the furnace of this revenge, she rallied the townspeople, she instigated the hunt for Bogue's head. Under the cover of righteousness, of course, of _defending what was rightfully theirs_. It was a good reason. No one would suspect her to be as spiteful as she was, to risk the lives of her friends like she did. Or, if they did, this knowledge would never make it into a history book.

She was responsible for Goodnight's death. Billy's heart beat with hate for a minute, and she could see it in his eyes.

There was nothing on her face, no reaction. She got up. “It feels like someone took a knife and carved into me, _out of me_ , everything that I was and put it into the coffin, right next to him,” she said, as if explaining her pain would make her selfish sacrifice any more just. “It feels like my innards are spilled over his body and my blood poured into his mouth. All of it is down there with him. The only thing I can do, for him and the people, is to seek revenge. ”

She breezed past him, smelling of grass and earth as if she had tried to bury herself right beside her husband. Maybe she had. Maybe she spent the whole night out there, at his grave, sleeping by his side.

Maybe this was what she was telling him. _This is how it feels to lose a Sentinel._

_This is what it means to love a Sentinel._

 

-

 

Billy worked on the church tower, drawn by the words Emma left lying here, floating, in the soothing presence of a God that may or may not exist. He erected new pillars for Him, worked on making the bells – His _call_ – sound again.

He and some other men toiled away on it all morning, all noon, until half of them were hungry and the other half starving. Billy didn't say anything as he followed them, lagging a few steps behind, content with being a shadow rather than a part of the crowd. Happier with not being seen.

It was only this that kept the others from noticing when he suddenly stumbled and fell into the nearest quiet corner, gripping his throat and pressing a hand to his face to keep from screaming. His heart was beating a burning rhythm in his throat, and for a brutal moment, the rush of blood was all that filled his head.

On the other side of town, Faraday had just forced Goodnight to shoot something, and all the carefully crafted barriers that kept the past at bay were crumbling into pieces.

Broken floodgates. The shards of a soul.

Billy didn't realize that he was sobbing, awash in the torment of his Sentinel's soul, bearing a weight that was not his but that he couldn't help but take on regardless.

 

-

 

He was still out of sorts when Goodnight found him later, homing in on him like a beacon. Billy was half-drunk on whiskey, and bit his tongue to keep from slurring. Clenched his fingers around his glass to keep from _grabbing_ and _holding_ and _never letting go_.

Billy straightened his shoulders as the Sentinel approached, but kept his eyes glued to the wooden bar. Don't come closer, it said, don't come near me. I don't need you.

I don't _need_ you.

But Goodnight sat down beside him, close enough to touch, close enough to smell him – sweat and gunpowder and dust and saddle oil and _home_ , so much home. His hand found Billy's neck, fingers a steady pressure, an anchor-line to a shore he should have reached lifetimes ago.

Contact.

After five years, he didn't dare question any more how Goodnight could see right through him.

 

-

 

“You have to go.” Billy said, once his throat was moist enough to form words, his composure strong enough to not break into tears at the very thought.

Goodnight shook his head. “No.”

“Leave.” It was said quietly, defeated, but there was an edge of urgency behind the words, something... pleading.

Goodnight had _never_ heard Billy plead. It cut through him like whetted steel. But before he got a chance to answer, Billy pulled back, eased his shields, and he felt it. _Felt_ the rush of what was happening. Rose Creek's many deaths, the anguish, the certainty of Death lurking in the shadows beneath each town house, in the hinges of every door, the sliver of black beneath every window frame.

Billy was not afraid. He was _terrified_.

Of his own helplessness, of his own... devotion. Goodnight never knew how much Billy felt for him. He suspected that there was more, somewhere inside, somewhere deep and forgotten and rotting, like at the bottom of a stone well from the middle ages, somewhere in Europe, somewhere his parents would call his 'roots'. He'd lost his roots too long ago to really care, was tethered him to this world was the man in front of him.

He knew he would go, had to, because Billy was bound to this place, bound in his nature, a Guide's need to help. The will of Rose Creek swirled around him like a windstorm, and he was the eye of the it. A hostage, forever, to what others wanted.

The price of being a Guide.

The inevitable conclusion of this week loomed over the both of them, and Billy knew his death sentence has been signed. He had no illusions about his own end. He could no more free himself than a man buried to his neck in quicksand.

He had always been Goodnight's shield, but now he needed him to disappear, because if he had to protect Goodnight from his demons he couldn't fight, and he needed to fight if he wanted his soul, his whole being, to stay as close to sane as he still could.

Because with Goodnight there, his priority was not his own life.

Goodnight hunched his shoulders, a growl rising in his throat. He let it out. The urge to protect, to defend, was singing in his blood, but the chorus of guilt was stronger, has always been. There was nothing he could aim his wrath at, nothing that didn't also make him snarl and recoil in fear. All his Sentinel-senses were useless in face of this agony, all his will and experience mere smoke in face of the inevitable.

Billy was still trying to save what he couldn't lose.

With Goodnight gone, Billy would not have to watch him fail and die. It was humiliating, and humbling, and Goodnight stood up and brushed his hands on his pants and sighed, because they understood each other so well and he should have kissed and loved Billy when he still had the chance.

It was gone now. Rose Creek swallowed it like it had swallowed so much hope, gulped down so many bright futures.

Life without Billy was not worth living, Goodnight knew. But he called his horse anyway, submitted to Billy's will because it was the last way to show his love. Billy so rarely asked things of him, maybe it was even the first time, and Goodnight wanted to give him this.

 

-

 

He rode into the night, cold air on his face and the distinct feeling of hard won peace at the back of his mind, where Billy slept. Their bond would be broken tomorrow, when he died, the most precious thing he ever had the pleasure of holding ripped from Goodnight's mind, leaving only fury and fever.

He could give Billy that peace of mind, a night and half a day of freedom, until the battle commenced tomorrow.

Goodnight stayed his horse on a hill so he could see Bogue's men coming.

In two days, the morning sun would illuminate two more graves, and the warm brush of summer would return with promises of hope and harvest. Tomorrow he would give Billy back what he took, _claimed_ , so many years ago. Devotion, loyalty, love.

It's a thing worth dying for. 

**Author's Note:**

> BIG thanks to Trinculo for beta-ing!
> 
> I actually have _no idea_ where this one came from, haha. Guess Goodnight and Billy just wanted some angst?  
>  Anyone interested in more Sentinel-Guide stories for this fandom?
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
